The Fairfield Five, a Black gospel group, sings to a room full of white folks:
Thursday, August 3, 2023
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
Tuesday, August 1, 2023
Sunday, July 30, 2023
Move
Move through dew
on grass like an eelmuscling itself between
canals. Move
into light and shadow,
the dappled landscape
of your life. Ride
like a child
the silly contraptions
of commerce--escalator,
elevator, metro, & sad,
sagging bus. Keep
going, knowing
you're probably not
going to get anywhere
special fast, except Here.
hans ostrom 2023
Hello, Stranger
(with apologies to Barbara Lewis, who recorded the song "Hello, Stranger," in the 1960s)
As I walked under
a Norwegian spruce
today, a dove cooed
three times.
It sounded like someone
blowing carefully
on a conch shell:
the hard c in coo
had dissolved.
Three musical notes:
what a nice thing
to say to a stranger
walking by, I thought--
how sweetly polite,
how tonal, coaxing a
smile out of me.
hans ostrom 2023
Squashes in the Farmers' Market
Market squashes (do the Brits
call them "marrow"?) conjure a carnivalof painted shapes self-sculpted
by the genius of seeds. Like books,
the squashes have pulp inside,
enclosed by hard or soft covers.
Some species hold a hollow
zone where sound can play.
Dried gourds become instruments,
and a thumped pumpkin will mumble
autumn syllables. A crook-necked
squash can become the baton
that conducts Zucchini's unfinished
symphony. Still, Fall does mean
the party's over. We select our squash,
haul it home to grill or bake--or cut up
raw. Next Summer's vines are already
blue-printed in seeds as the soil rolls
over, exhausted, in need of dreams.
hans ostrom 2023
Uphill
July heat hangs over the bottom
of the hill, scratching at melike an old wool blanket.
Crows that aren't picking
mites from feathers
leave their beaks open
to cool down. Mid-way
up the climb, I flag
& my vision gets a little
weird. Dehydration.
I sit on a a dark grey
rock under a tree.
Finally I make it to
the top of the hill:
a breeze kicks in.
I feel better but still
old & I buy a bottle
of water, splashing
some on my hot
neck and forehead,
guzzling the rest.
People, shrubs, buildings,
buses: though brightly lit,
they all, every one, look tired.
hans ostrom 2023
We, the Scribblers
Pencil, pen, typewriter, or
device--it's al scribbling.Poets scribble. They worry
words like squirrels
spinning chestnuts
in their paws, like spiders
dancing on filaments
they've spun. From Li Bai
stumbling through the Chinese
mountains to a right-now
middle-school girl or boy
in Tehran or Kansas,
to an old man or woman
in Costa Rica or the Ivory Coast,
everywhere poets find a page,
an opening, a little place,
in which to scratch words
they know that seem to push
themselves out, hauling
ideas and emotions with them
from some underground mind,
some sense of things
in the gut or the chest,
some wildness amid the
planks and bricks of conformity.
hans ostrom 2023
Under the Heat Domes
Near the supermarket (and what
an American word that is), crowspeck at a crumpled bag from
a fast-food place; a woman begs
(her sign says "ANYTHING HELPS/
GOD BLESS"); and a two-acre
parking lot fills with cars
that face each other in lines
like 18th century troops.
The windshields glare.
The black tires roast.
Car alarms start to twitch.
I'm just another ghost
in training, pushing an empty
cage on wheels, headed
toward a section called Produce,
an Impressionist's or Cubist's
heaven of colors & shapes invented
by soil, trees, bushes, stalks,
and vines. Much of the Northern
Hemisphere today is on fire
and under heat domes. The
supermarket's air-cooling
machines crank out false breeze
in the false peace of retail space.
International Share a Secret Day
Hey, It's International Share a
Secret Day, or I've been lied to,anyway it's a day when spies
and politicians go mad &
confessors go glad, pleased
to let at least one heavy hidden
tale fly light and free and bright
like a butterfly. Many secrets
there are out there today!
They swarm like hornets,
they roll like waves of desert
dust, and some stink like
putrefied garbage. I've kept
some secrets so long, they've
dried up like dates in a pharaoh's
tomb & there's nothing to tell,
so I make something up. I lie.
I whisper fiction-secrets
like squeaking crickets
on this gabby, shabby date called
International Share a Secret Day.
hans ostrom 2023
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